• Early modern drama
• (Neo-) Victorian literature and culture
• Modernism
• Contemporary British and Irish theatre
• Adaptation
• Gender and Queer Studies
• Postcolonial Studies
• Museums, archives, and cultural memory

Current Classes

Past Classes

Positions

since 06.2026

Professor of English Literary and Cultural Studies (Special Focus: Gender and Queer Studies), University of Cologne

04.2024 – 05.2026

Interim Professor of English Literary and Cultural Studies (Special Focus: Gender and Queer Studies), University of Cologne

04. – 07.2022

Visiting Researcher, University of Oxford (Host: Prof. Elleke Boehmer)

2016 – 2026

Assistant Professor, English Department, Chair of British Studies

2012 – 2016

Research Associate, English Department, Chair of British Studies

Education

since 01.2024

Venia Legendi 'Britische Literatur- und Kulturwissenschaft'

2017 – 2019

NRW-Zertifikat ‘Professionelle Lehrkompetenz für die Hochschule’ am Zentrum für Hochschullehre, Universität Münster

2012 – 2016

PhD in English Literary and Cultural Studies

2010 – 2012

MA British, American and Postcolonial Studies at the Universities of Münster and Northampton, UK.

2007 – 2010

BA English/American Studies and German Studies at the University of Münster

MONOGRAPHS

• Narrating Empire and Domesticity in Neo-Victorian Fiction: Domestic Elsewheres. Palgrave, 2025.
• Shakespeare’s Suicides: Dead Bodies That Matter. New York and London: Routledge, 2018. *Reviewed in Shakespeare Jahrbuch 155 (2019); SEL: Studies in English Literature 1500–1900 59.2 (2019); Renaissance Quarterly 73.3 (2020).

EDITED WORKS

• Black Neo-Victoriana. Ed. Felipe Espinoza Garrido, Marlena Tronicke and Julian Wacker. Leiden: Brill-Rodopi, 2021. *Reviewed in Neo-Victorian Studies 14.1 (2022); Journal for the Study of British Cultures 29.2 (2022).
• Writing Brexit: Colonial Remains. Ed. Caroline Koegler, Pavan K. Malreddy and Marlena Tronicke. London: Routledge, 2021. *Reviewed in Journal of British Studies 61.4 (2022); Journal of Postcolonial Writing (2023).
• Queering Neo-Victorianism Beyond Sarah Waters, Special Issue Neo-Victorian Studies 13.1 (2020). Ed. Caroline Koegler and Marlena Tronicke.
• Writing Brexit: Colonial Remains, Special Issue Journal of Postcolonial Writing 56.5 (2020). Ed. Caroline Koegler, Pavan K. Malreddy and Marlena Tronicke.
• Shakespeare on Stage and Screen: Romeo and Juliet in Excerpts – Teachers’ Book. Ed. Rainer Gocke and Marlena Tronicke. Paderborn: Schöningh-Schulbuch, 2017.
• Shakespeare on Stage and Screen: Romeo and Juliet in Excerpts. Ed. Rainer Gocke and Marlena Tronicke. Paderborn: Schöningh-Schulbuch, 2016.
• Shakespeare on Stage and Screen: Othello in Excerpts – Teachers’ Book. Ed. Rainer Gocke and Marlena Tronicke. Paderborn: Schöningh-Schulbuch, 2015.
• Shakespeare on Stage and Screen: Othello in Excerpts. Ed. Rainer Gocke and Marlena Tronicke. Paderborn: Schöningh-Schulbuch, 2015.

JOURNAL ARTICLES

• ‘“Slippy with rot”: The Irish Potato Famine and Neo-Victorianism’s Colonial Roots.’ In Anglia 142.1 (2024): 63–79, Special Issue Ecocritical Perspectives on the Long Nineteenth Century: Form, Media, Materiality. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/ang-2024-0006.
• ‘Precarious Bodies: Locating Spectatorship in the National Theatre of Scotland’s Scenes for Survival Series.’ In International Theatre Research 48.1 (2023): 52–66, Special Issue Presence, Politics, Resistance − Tendencies in (Post-)Pandemic Performance and Theatre. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0307883322000402.
• ‘“Through the pen to begin with”: Anticolonial Resistance in Tanika Gupta’s Adaptation of Great Expectations.’ In Journal of Contemporary Drama in English 10.2 (2022): 283–301, Special Issue Tanika Gupta. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/jcde-2022-0022.
• ‘Heterotopian Disorientation: Intersectionality in William Oldroyd’s Lady Macbeth.’ In Humanities 11.1 (2021), Special Issue Neo-Victorian Heterotopias. DOI: https://doi.org/10.3390/h11010013.
• ‘“For other than for dancing measures”: Jigs at Shakespeare’s Globe and the Politics of Shakespearean Performance.’ In Shakespeare Seminar 17 (2020): 59–71.
• ‘Neo-Victorianism’s Queer Potentiality: Livability and Intersectional Imaginaries.’ In Neo-Victorian Studies 13.1 (2020): 1–43, Special Issue Queering Neo-Victorianism Beyond Sarah Waters. (with Caroline Koegler)
• ‘Imperial Pasts, Dystopian Futures, and the Theatre of Brexit.’ In Journal of Postcolonial Writing 56.5 (2020): 662–675, Special Issue Writing Brexit: Colonial Remains. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/17449855.2020.181844.
• ‘The Colonial Remains of Brexit: Empire Nostalgia and Narcissistic Nationalism.’ In Journal of Postcolonial Writing 56.5 (2020): 585–592, Special Issue Writing Brexit: Colonial Remains. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/17449855.2020.1818440. (with Caroline Koegler and Pavan Malreddy)
• ‘“What are you doing”? Reclaiming Juliet’s Agency in the YouTube Series Sassy Gay Friend.’ In Shakespeare en Devenir 14 (2019), Special Issue Romeo and Juliet: From Page to Image,  https://shakespeare.edel.univ-poitiers.fr/index.php?id=1806.
• ‘Terror by Candlelight: The Affective Politics of Fear in Tanika Gupta’s Lions and Tigers.’ In Journal of Contemporary Drama in English 7.1 (2019): 58–71, Special Issue Fear and Anxiety in Contemporary Drama and Performance. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/jcde-2019-0005.
• ‘What Condition of England? Re-Imagining the “Two Nations” in David Lodge’s Nice Work.’ In Neo-Victorian Studies 10.1 (2017): 110–132, Special Issue Neo-Victorianism and the Discourses of Education.
• ‘The Pain of Others: Silencing Lavinia in Titus Andronicus.’ In Shakespeare Seminar 13 (2015): 39–49.

BOOK CHAPTERS

• ‘“That Body of Hers”: Verhandlungen krimineller Weiblichkeit in John Websters The White Devil (1612) und The Duchess of Malfi (1614).’ In Vergeltung und Verfahren. Zur Verbrechensdarstellung vor der klassischen Kriminalliteratur, ed. Eric Achermann and Sebastian Speth. Metzler, 2025, 243-264.
• ‘“Keep the secrets of the past buried”: Taboo’s Saltwater Hauntings.’ In Postcolonial Oceans: Contradictions, Heterogeneities, Knowledges, Materialities, ed. Sukla Chatterjee, Joanna Chojnicka, Anna-Katharina Hornidge and Kerstin Knopf. Heidelberg: Heidelberg University Publishing, 2023. 397–413.
• ‘Blackness and Neo-Victorian Studies: Re-Routing Imaginations of the Nineteenth Century.’ In Black Neo-Victoriana, ed. Felipe Espinoza Garrido, Marlena Tronicke and Julian Wacker. Leiden: Brill-Rodopi, 2021. 1–30. (with Felipe Espinoza Garrido and Julian Wacker)
• ‘“A Natural Tint”: Lolita Chakrabarti’s Red Velvet and Archive of Black Victorian Theatre.’ In Black Neo-Victoriana, ed. Felipe Espinoza Garrido, Marlena Tronicke and Julian Wacker. Leiden: Brill-Rodopi, 2021. 96–119.
• ‘“I Have Shown You Milk”: Performing Legal Truths in Nina Raine’s Consent and Lucy Kirkwood’s The Welkin.’ In Law and Literature, ed. Franziska Quabeck. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2021. 135–152.
• ‘Imperial Pasts, Dystopian Futures, and the Theatre of Brexit.’ In Writing Brexit: Colonial Remains, ed. Caroline Koegler, Pavan K. Malreddy and Marlena Tronicke. London: Routledge, 2021. 78–91.
• ‘The Colonial Remains of Brexit: Empire Nostalgia and Narcissistic Nationalism.’ In Writing Brexit: Colonial Remains, ed. Caroline Koegler, Pavan K. Malreddy and Marlena Tronicke. London: Routledge, 2021. 1–8. (with Caroline Koegler and Pavan Malreddy)
• ‘“A Bootless Inquisition”? – Searching for Imaginary Homelands in Shakespeare’s The Tempest.’ In Symbols of Diaspora, ed. Florian Kläger. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2014. 183–197.

HANDBOOKS AND ENCYCLOPEDIAS

• ‘Critique and Contestation.’ In Handbook of Neo-Victorianism, ed. Marie-Luise Kohlke and Christian Gutleben. Leiden: Brill-Rodopi, 2024. (forthcoming 2026)
• ‘Critical Race Theory.’ In Handbook of Neo-Victorianism, ed. Marie-Luise Kohlke and Christian Gutleben. Leiden: Brill-Rodopi, 2024. (forthcoming 2026)
• ‘Trial Scenes in Anglophone Theatre.’ In Encyclopedia of Law and Literature, ed. Thomas Gutmann, Eberhard Ortland and Klaus Stierstorfer (2022). https://lawandliterature.eu/index.php/en/content-en?view=article&id=5&catid=10.
• ‘Gerichtsszenen im englischsprachigen Theater.’ In Enzyklopädie Recht und Literatur, ed. Thomas Gutmann, Eberhard Ortland and Klaus Stierstorfer (2022). https://lawandliterature.eu/index.php/de/inhalt?view=article&id=9&catid=11.
• ‘London.’ In Metzler Lexikon Literarische Symbole, ed. Günther Butzer and Joachim Jacob. 3. Aufl. Stuttgart and Weimar: Metzler, 2021. 373–375.
• ‘England.’ In Metzler Lexikon Literarische Symbole, ed. Günther Butzer and Joachim Jacob. 3. Aufl. Stuttgart and Weimar: Metzler, 2021. 144–146.

BOOK REVIEWS

• ‘Marissa Fragkou and Rebecca Benzie (ed.), The Methuen Drama Handbook of Women in Contemporary British Theatre.’ In Journal of Contemporary Drama in English 14.2 (2026). (forthcoming)
• 'Colby Gordon, Glorious Bodies: Trans Theology and Renaissance Literature.’ In Shakespeare Jahrbuch162 (2026): 277–279.
• 'Benjamin Poore, The Contemporary History Play: Staging English and American Pasts.’ In Journal of Contemporary Drama in English 13.2 (2025): 396–399.
• 'Sophie Duncan, Searching for Juliet: The Lives and Deaths of Shakespeare's First Tragic Heroine.' In Shakespeare Jahrbuch 160 (2024): 303–304.
• ‘Stephen Guy-Bray, Shakespeare and Queer Representation.’ In Shakespeare Jahrbuch 159 (2023): 191–192.
• ‘Alan Read, The Dark Theatre: A Book About Loss.’ In Journal of Contemporary Drama in English 10.2 (2022): 397–400.
• ‘Kate Aughterson and Ailsa Grant Ferguson, Shakespeare and Gender: Sex and Sexuality in Shakespeare’s Drama.’ In Shakespeare Jahrbuch 158 (2022): 226–228.
• ‘Othello (dir. Michael Thalheimer), Berliner Ensemble, 2019.’ In Shakespeare Bulletin 38.1 (2021): 121–125. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/shb.2020.0007.
• ‘Victorian Ideologies in Contemporary British Cultures, ed. Christina Flotmann-Scholz and Anna Lienen.’ In Journal for the Study of British Cultures 27.1 (2020): 101–104.
• ‘Die Fremden/Der Kaufmann von Venedig (dir. Stefan Otteni), Theater Muenster, 2018.’ In Shakespeare Bulletin 36.2 (2018): 345–349. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/shb.2018.0031.
• ‘Antonija Primorac, Neo-Victorianism on Screen: Postfeminism and Contemporary Adaptations of Victorian Women.’ In Symbolism. An International Annual of Critical Aesthetics 18 (2018): 213–217. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110580822-018.

2027

• ‘Roundtable: Teaching Queer Studies in the Modern University’. History of Universities Seminar. 03/02/2027 (via Zoom)

2026

• ‘Reclaiming Desire: Fin-de-Siècle Sexology and Historical Revision in Tom Crewe’s The New Life'. ‘Marginalised Voices’, Annual Conference of the Modernism, Aestheticism, Decadence Studies Network (MADS), Universtät Augsburg. 10/07/2026.

2025

• ‘Queer Returns: Neo-Victorianism’s Perverse Presentism and the Literary Archive'. Ringvorlesung des interdisziplinären Masters Gender & Queer Studies, Universität zu Köln. 03/12/2025
• '“Like Weather”: Neo-Victorian Afterimages of Empire and Domesticity’. ‘Neo-Historical Fiction at 2025: Prized Temporalities and Contested Progress’, EXC 2020 ‘Temporal Communities: Doing Literature in a Global Perspective’, Freie Universität Berlin, 03/06/2025.

2024

• ‘Beware the Woke Brigade: Affective Fixations and Queer Potentialities in Contemporary Shakespearean Performance’. ‘Affekte, Emotionen, Positionen’, gemeinsame Ringvorlesung des Zentrums Gender Studies in Köln (GeStiK) und der Philosophischen Fakultät, Universität zu Köln, 21/11/2024.
• ‘Discipline and Punish: Imperial Fantasies of Domination in Fin-de-Siècle Pornography.’ ‘Global Encounters’, Annual Conference of Modernism, Aestheticism, Decadence Studies Network (MADS), HU Berlin, 29/09/2024.
• ‘“It’s what I call life”: Domestic Imprisonment and Queer Livability in Rebecca Lenkiewicz’ Her Naked Skin (2008)’. Workshop ‘Women’s Suffrage Movements’, Centre for British Studies, HU Berlin, 20/09/2024.

2023

• ‘Twenty-First-Century Victorians: Neo-Victorian Adaptation and Appropriation’. Gastvortrag, Department of English and American Studies, Justus-Liebig-Universität Gießen, 7/2/2023.
• ‘Imperial Hunger: Neo-Victorian Afterimages of the Irish Famine’. Lecture series "Hotspots in Literary/Cultural Studies and Linguistics", WWU Münster, 11/1/2023.

2021

• ‘Lives under Lockdown: Negotiations of Precarity in the National Theatre of Scotland and the BBC’s Scenes for Survival Series’. Post-COVID-19 Art Worlds, Hannover, 23/7/2021.

2020

• ‘Jigs at Shakespeare’s Globe and the Politics of Performance’. Shakespeare and Dance, Jahrestagung der Deutschen Shakespeare-Gesellschaft, Weimar, 22/11/2020.

2019

• ‘Neo-Victorian Spaces of Resistance in William Oldroyd's Lady Macbeth’. Guest lecture, FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg, 25/11/2019.
• ‘Neo-Victorianism and the Troubled Memory of Empire: Taboo’s Imperial Surfaces’. Guest lecture, Universität Augsburg, 17/7/2019.
• ‘“Keep the secrets of the past buried”: Salt Water Hauntings in the BBC’s Taboo’. Postcolonial Oceans: Contradictions and Heterogeneities in the Epistemes of Salt Water, Universität Bremen, 31/5/2019.

2018

• ‘Terror by Candlelight: Tanika Gupta's Lions and Tigers at the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse’. CDE Conference 2018: Fear and Anxiety in Contemporary Drama and Performance, Universität Hildesheim, 1/6/2018.

2016

• ‘'Is This Well Done?' - Gendering Shakespeare's Suicides’. Cultures of Mortality: Death on the Shakespearean Stage, Shakespeare's Globe, London, 2/12/2016.

2015

• ‘Digitalizing Agency: Shakespeare on YouTube’. Lecture series "Hotspots in Literary/Cultural Studies and Linguistics", WWU Münster, 2/12/2015.
• Tronicke, Marlena (2015): ‘Screaming Silence: Lavinia in Titus Andronicus’. Shakespeare Tage: Shakespeare’s Unsung Heroes and Heroines, Berlin, 24/4/2015.

2014

• ‘Re-Imagining Holmes in the 21st Century: BBC’s Sherlock’. Lecture series "Hotspots in Literary/Cultural Studies and Linguistics", WWU Münster, 3/12/2014.
• ‘Shakespeare’s Comic Suicides’. Lecture series "Hotspots in Literary/Cultural Studies and Linguistics", WWU Münster, 15/1/2014.

2012

• ‘Female Comic Side-Kicks in Shakespeare’. Guest Lecture, University of Mumbai, 24/2/2012.

• Modernism, Aestheticism, Decadence Studies (MADS)
• DACH Victorianists
• Gesellschaft für Anglophone Postkoloniale Studien (GAPS)
• Deutsche Gesellschaft für das Studium britischer Kulturen (BritCult)
• The German Society for Contemporary Theatre and Drama in English (CDE)
• European Shakespeare Research Association (ESRA)
• Deutscher Anglistikverband
• European Society for the Study of English (ESSE)
• Deutsche Shakespeare-Gesellschaft
• Gender Studies in Köln (GeStiK)